Actions

Nonprofits encourage consumers to participate in Giving Tuesday

After three days of shopping nation-wide, the focus is now shifting to Giving Tuesday.

The day encourages donations and volunteering in support of charities and non-profit organizations. It's a way for Maddie's Footprints to get help with comforting grieving families.

"It is a feeling, an emotion like no other," Heathe Courville said. "You think you're going to bring home your child and instead you have to bury them."

It's been 3 years since Courville and his wife lost their twin boys at birth, after tangled umbilical cords cut off their source of life.

"It's an experience like no other. No family should ever have to experience the lost of a child ," Courville said.

Along with grief, the Courville family found themselves in a financial bind. That's when Maddie's Footprints stepped in.

"A lot of people don't realize that when you lose a child, infant, or whatever the case might be; you can not put life insurance on these children," Courville said. "Through Maddie's they allow families to bury their children at little to no cost."

For a decade, the organization has helped family's like the Courville's cope with the loss of an infant.

"In the 10 year's we've been open we've helped out more than 1400 families," Edie Couvillon with Maddie's Footprints said. "We've given out about $775,000 thousand dollars in aid. Any family that comes to Maddie's is accepted. We have a 10 Parish region that we cover."

Courville is encouraging others to give to an organization that gives parents hope during their time of grief.

"They have a been a beacon of hope for the community , " Courville said. "Maddie's provides financial support. Not only financial support, but provides monthly and weekly support meetings and through those meetings, they've helped us tremendously ."